Although Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has yet to sit on his stolen throne, the dagger of fascist repression and deception is already unsheathed, auguring six years of darkness facing the Filipino people.

Over the past few weeks, the people’s democratic rights to free expression and peaceably redress their grievances and protests were sustainedly threatened and assaulted. At least three street mass actions were violently dispersed by police using truncheons and water cannons. These brought back bitter memories of repression during the period of the fascist Marcos dictatorship during which people were outrightly prohibited from assembling and speaking out.

In justifying their violent dispersal, police officials insisted that the rallies formed part of “destabilization.” Demonstrators are denounced as “illegal” and the youth rallyists as “victims of provocation.” People’s voices repudiating the return of the Marcoses to power and expressing protests against widespread fraud in the past elections are being drowned.

The Philippine National Police (PNP) is using the Marcos-era Batas Pambansa 880 to impose limits on the people’s rights to mount street demonstrations. The PNP has openly declared an anti-democratic policy and laid out the policy under the Marcos II regime.

By suppressing street rallies, PNP officials are showing off to Marcos Jr. to prove their readiness to serve the wishes of the dictator’s son in the same way that they served as wardens who keep check on whoever raises their voices or takes action against corruption, plunder and repression under martial law.

Congruent with the cruel suppression of democratic rights, it is foreseeable that deception and covering-up the Marcoses’ crimes will be heightened on the pretext of “debating history” and giving them the “chance to air their side.” The Marcoses will use their political power and vast government resources to flood and overwhelm mass media, social media, education and culture with the Marcos-style distortion of history and truth.

Through various means, the mass media is prevented from performing their work of reporting the truth instead of returning to their martial law role as mere mouthpieces of Marcos and his officials. Marcos’ officials want to give more space to their social media promoters (“vloggers”) to drown and cast media aside. Critical reporters and broadcasters, as well as academics and experts, are being denied the opportunity to ask questions and dig for information, are mocked and sneered or brazenly threatened.

The term “unity” is being distorted to make everyone kneel before the Marcoses, buy the loyalty of judges, politicians and big business, silence or railroad dissenters, in order to dominate all aspects of politics and society. The Marcoses now have full control of the Senate and Congress. It is not far that the Supreme Court will soon follow.

The elements of political repression and deception are quickly being laid out to build Marcos’ reign of absolute control over the state and society. This power will surely be used by the Marcoses to secure their interests including their $10-billion illegally acquired wealth, bank deposits, jewelry, mansions, expensive paintings and works of art, unpaid taxes, and to completely evade culpability for the thousands killed, tortured and oppressed during the dark years of martial law.

The resort to tyrannical repression and deception now characterizes the class rule of the neocolonial state of the bourgeois compradors and big landlords. Amid the global and domestic crisis, the ruling clique becomes even more rapacious in its desire to monopolize the diminishing benefits of their collusion with foreign big banks and corporations.

It favors the ruling clique to use absolute power to ram down national sovereignty, siphon all the country’s wealth and take away everything from the people. The surplus capital being held by US, Japanese and Chinese banks are being used to force countries into indebtedness on the pretext of “development” to buy their commodities and services.

After Duterte recently signed the new neoliberal laws, American companies in mining and plantations are rushing to get in, especially in Mindanao. In line with this is the intensified campaign of suppression against the peasant masses and minority people to drive them away and take away their land. The pro-Marcos big bourgeoisie and bureaucrat capitalists will surely benefit from big government contracts for infrastructure, control of public utilities and others.

While some big bourgeois compradors and bureaucrat capitalists become billionaires, majority of the people wallow in poverty and hunger, low wages, widespread unemployment and lack of income. Their sufferings worsen everyday as the crisis of the ruling semicolonial and semifeudal system deepens.

To the Filipino people, especially the workers and toiling masses, Marcos Jr.’s absolute rule will lead to their democratic rights being taken away, and shutting various avenues for free expression. They are being forced by the situation to further unite and act collectively to express their grievances and defend their interests and welfare. The progressive and patriotic classes and sectors must undertake efforts to build across the country a broadest united front of all democratic forces to isolate the absolute reign of Marcos II.

At the same time, the revolutionary armed struggle in the countryside must be strengthened. As in the past, the New People’s Army will serve as an invincible fort of people’s resistance against fascist tyranny.